Faculty
Social Science
Supervisor Name
John Paul Minda
Keywords
Categorization Culture
Description
The rapid advancement of cross-cultural research in recent decades has raised questions on the extent to which findings in cognitive psychology can be generalized to a global population. The majority of subjects in scientific literature, being WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations, only represent a sliver of the world’s diverse demographics, limiting our scope of psychological data to a highly specific subgroup. Emerging research has made us increasingly aware of the variances in cognition across cultures, including the learning and utilization of categories. Many lab-based categorization tasks have demonstrated that cognitive processes may be contingent on cultural factors. Specifically, individuals may differ on their default approach to classification, either preferring an analytic or holistic method when approaching category learning, and this preference may be influenced by culture and language.
Acknowledgements
The research was funded and supported by USRI, Western Research, Western Libraries, Student Experience and the Social Science Faculty. We would like to thank Dr. Minda, Ana Ruiz Pardo, and Neha Khemani for their guidance
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Document Type
Poster
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons
Does Culture Affect the Ability to Learn and Use Categories?
The rapid advancement of cross-cultural research in recent decades has raised questions on the extent to which findings in cognitive psychology can be generalized to a global population. The majority of subjects in scientific literature, being WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations, only represent a sliver of the world’s diverse demographics, limiting our scope of psychological data to a highly specific subgroup. Emerging research has made us increasingly aware of the variances in cognition across cultures, including the learning and utilization of categories. Many lab-based categorization tasks have demonstrated that cognitive processes may be contingent on cultural factors. Specifically, individuals may differ on their default approach to classification, either preferring an analytic or holistic method when approaching category learning, and this preference may be influenced by culture and language.